Ernest Green: Little Rock Remembered

When we read about historic civil rights moments, we typically associate those events to earlier times, and particularly for students of today to past generations. Names like Martin Luther King Jr., Medgar Evers, and Rosa Parks are etched in our memory for the challenges they faced, gains they achieved, and sacrifices they made – some who paid the ultimate price by giving their lives.

Ernest Green received high school
diploma in May 1958 from principal
(Photo: Museum of American History)

When I learned that Ernest Green, the sole senior among the nine students who had integrated Central High School in 1957, was coming to my college to give a lecture, I knew that I had to attend and see him in person. Attesting to the contribution by Green to civil rights in the United States, Dr. John Dempsey, president of Sandhills Community College, said that Green “may not belong in the same sentence as Rosa Parks but he belongs in the same paragraph.”

Green (student at right) is blocked with
two others from entering school by
National Guardsman on Sep. 4, 1957
(Photo: Arkansas History Commission)

The events that unfolded in Little Rock, Arkansas, in 1957 are moments that my classes on the American South discuss each semester. They are significant for demonstrating that state law and officials can no longer overturn federal guarantees for civil rights. In the third year after the Brown vs. Board of Education decision, the school board of Little Rock had planned a quiet desegregation of the principal high school in the capital city of Arkansas. However, the plans were thrown into turmoil when Governor Faubus ringed the school campus with National Guard soldiers with orders to block nine African-American students.

As we all have learned, President Eisenhower deployed more than a thousand U.S. Army paratroopers to Little Rock to counter the governor’s show of force and to provide protection for the nine students. The lone senior in the group was Ernest Green, a name many Americans no longer recall, although the events are easily identified as a turning point in the Civil Rights Movement.

Greens gives a Ruth Pauley Lecture
at SCC in February 2013

The lecture that Green gave was uplifting, and everyone in the audience seemed moved by his words and deeds. In addition to the expected points of the speech, a few facts surprised me:

• The school board had approved 26 or 27 African American students, including seniors, to transfer to Central High as part of the initial desegregation. Green said, “Others dropped out. When I turned around and looked, I was standing by myself.” 
• His mother had voted for Gov. Faubus. He had desegregated buses and state transportation, and she thought that he represented “ideas of change.” 
• After high school Green attended Michigan State where he received a scholarship from an anonymous donor. As a college student, Green said he actively engaged in civil rights protests and demonstrations, including several in front of the home of the university president. Green learned much later that the anonymous donor had been the president himself only after he had died.

Green speaks to state labor
convention in 1967 (10 years
after high school integration)
(Photo: Arkansas History
Commission)

As Green discussed “Living a Fearless Life,” one point was to “not settle on any one moment of your life as being good enough.” Having survived his tumultuous senior year of high school, Green could have easily rested on that achievement. I was taken by the pressure that he placed on himself to attain high achievements throughout adulthood. The Congressional Gold Medal that he received in 1998 attests to his lifetime success, much broader than his role in school integration.

At the end of the lecture, Green entertained a few questions. The audience was stunned when one person rose to say that he had been one of the National Guardsmen on duty obeying the governor's orders to keep Green and the other eight off campus. He rose not to ask a question concerning the lecture but to say that he wanted to shake Green's hand and see if Green would be willing. The long-awaited handshake took place after the event. Imagine how that handshake lifted a burden from the former soldier that he had been carrying for more than 50 years.

With Ernest Green before lunch discussion

The experience was meaningful for me by not only attending the lecture but also joining a small group who enjoyed lunch with Green earlier that day. During that session, he informally talked about being escorted from class to class by soldiers at Central High and how that experience required that he do more with his life than just graduate from high school. “We all have a Little Rock High School moment,” Green said. “The question is, do we accept it and take advantage of it?” He certainly has more than fulfilled the expectations of those who entrusted in 1957 such a fateful task to him.

As Green ended the lunchtime discussion, he said, “The future is always better than the past.” A remarkable life journey like his sometimes might make a person want to forget the past. However, as he told the lecture audience, “Remember where you came from and who went before you.”

Motivated Students and Dedicated Instructors

Imagine being a student in the first class of a school that provided the opportunity to achieve an education that had been long denied. Consider being an instructor in that school as it opened and being able to educate such a student. Because firsts in American education are such major achievements, the Beach Institute in Savannah, Georgia, has a noteworthy place in the heritage of educational triumphs, particularly in the American South.

Standing next to a chalkboard first used only two years after the American Civil War had ended, I had a sense of awe when I stood at the front of a classroom in the Beach Institute. As I looked the desks used when the school opened for newly emancipated African Americans, I tried to understand the obstacles that both students and instructors faced and consider their goals to improve lives through education.

The Beach Institute opened in 1867 with 600 students. With only eight classrooms, the institute was operating at more than full capacity as it tried to meet the needs of such eager students. A male principal led a staff of nine female teachers, most of whom were white and from the North.

Although Georgia custom and law prohibited teaching slaves to read and write, several secret schools in Savannah helped many enslaved Africans become skilled readers and writers (as the example of Susan King Taylor illustrates). Thus, when the Beach Institute opened, scores of students who enrolled could already read and write. According to Vaughnette Goode-Walker, director of cultural diversity and access at the Telfair Museums in Savannah, the number was as high as 200 (because learning was not against the law – only teaching).

Named for Alfred E. Beach (a philanthropist who donated land for the building), the institute was funded by the American Missionary Association (AMA), a society founded in 1846 by Congregational, Baptist, and Presbyterian abolitionists of New Haven, Connecticut. After the start of the American Civil War, the AMA began focusing on education for freed slaves. By 1868, the AMA, which also established many historical black colleges and universities, had more than five hundred teachers and missionaries throughout the South.

When the Beach Institute opened, its Greek revival style of architecture made it an impressive building. Even more impressive than its architecture is its social history, including efforts to fund and build it, supply skilled teachers and administrators, provide a credible education to its students, and maintain the structure as a historic structure when its days in education had ended.

Located in the historic district of Savannah, the three-story wood frame structure is the oldest surviving African American educational center in Georgia. The Beach Institute continued as a school until 1970 and has had only a few modifications to its floor plan, even though it also served as an elementary school high school, trade school, and center for adult education. It has now been recast as the Beach Institute African American Culture Center with a charge of collecting, interpreting, preserving, and presenting African American history and culture through educational events and exhibits, according to Darlene Wilson, a staff member and docent. As a result, the center continues its ability to generate public interest that dates back to October 3, 1868, when Harper’s Weekly featured the institute in an article about newly constructed schools for African Americans.

Other college instructors who were participating in a workshop on African American culture and history conducted by the Georgia Historical Society for the National Endowment for the Humanities shared my sense of awe when we entered a classroom. Although the original student desks are hard and uncomfortable by today’s ergometric standards, no one could pass the opportunity to sit at such historic desks and imagine being in the classroom in 1867. The educational challenges of today seem so minor when compared to the significant achievements that others before us accomplished.

Barbecuing for the Lord: Street Ministry Fixes Good Southern Food

Love and mercy are on the menu on N.C. 5 between Aberdeen and Pinehurst. “This is St. Paul’s, and street ministry is on the move. It’s God’s plan, not ours,” says Valerie Washington, a church volunteer whose passion is helping people in need.

In the area of Jackson Hamlet some drivers slow down on Fridays for a reason other than the 35 mph speed limit as they see smoke, and many are stopping to taste what’s on the grill. All the smoke is for a good cause.

“We are raising money to assist the needy,” says Leo Thomas, a volunteer cook for St. Paul’s Missionary Baptist Church in Jackson Hamlet. The grilling was “started to help families in need. We’ve been doing this for about two years,” he says. “The need is so great this year.”

The cooking is “part of layman’s league for the pastor. It benefits our benevolent fund,” he says. “The community has so many different needs, such as paying light bills. We try to help wherever we can.”

Thomas says the church used its grill proceeds last winter to provide complete turkey dinners to 68 families at Christmas in a combined effort with Mosaic Ministries in Seven Lakes and Greater Harvest in Midway. In addition, the money raised is used to purchase gift cards for families in need, says Anthony “Tony” Washington, an associate pastor at the church -- and Valerie’s husband.

More Than Chicken

The menu on Fridays usually features barbecued chicken and sometimes fish with sides that can include cabbage, cole slaw, baked beans and green beans. A plate is topped off with a slice of cake and drink. On some Fridays, the smoke is a little thicker because the volunteers are barbecuing ribs. The grill operation usually begins at 10 in the morning.

“We start to serve at 11 and stay until we sell out, usually by 3 pm. We always hope to sell 100-plus plates,” says Thomas. The church even offers plates free to law enforcement officers and a discount for the military, “but they usually give us donations,” Tony Washington says.

Ministry, Food and Education

Valerie Washington’s street ministry vision is influenced by her experience in New Jersey. “I came from a 3,000-member church in Atlantic City where street ministry and outreach are very important,” she says. “Feeding the homeless is really important in a large city. We brought that here with us. God sent us and has placed us in this path to minister.”

A regular volunteer at St. Paul’s roadside grill who loves barbecued chicken, she confesses, however, that her favorite dish is chicken and dumplings made by her grandmother. “It’s so good – an original Southern dish. My mom also made it for our family.”

Serving food for her church is only a part of what keeps her busy. She is still celebrating receiving a GED in June at Sandhills Community College. “I’ve been fighting for my diploma for 20 years,” she says. It took me a long time. The tutors at the college brought me a long way. I work at Wal-Mart, and going to school after work was a lot of pressure.”

She identified one tutor at SCC for special praise. “Mrs. Wanda Sweeney is one of the kindest, most courteous and most supportive persons,” says Valerie Washington. “She’s forever in her heart. I love her. They even gave me a party because I kept coming back, persevered and keep on going. I learned a lot at Sandhills Community College,” she says. She now plans to earn a cosmetology degree.

Even with a full-time job and additional stress as a student, she is typical of the St. Paul’s congregation who find time to enrich the community and enjoys each other’s fellowship when they work together on a ministry project.

Ministry and Military

St. Paul’s is a vital member of the area, says Tony Washington, who operates the grill when he’s not on duty with the Army. “The church is very family-oriented and has a membership of about 100,” says the Army noncommissioned officer, who was born in Pinehurst and has served around the world. “I’ve completed two tours in Iraq with one more overseas assignment to go, probably in Afghanistan.”

He says as he thinks of retirement from the military in about two years. Until then Thomas says he’ll continue to train soldiers for Iraq and Afghanistan. “My favorite Bible verses are from the 23rd Psalm because of where I go and the work that I do,” says the minister and soldier. “It’s very appropriate for me.”

Grilling is not a new activity for Washington, who says that he was about 11 years old when he handled a grill the first time while he was living in Texas. “In the South the young ones watch the grill. They are taught at a young age,” he says. Whether he’s barbecuing for the Lord or family and friends, he grills in the tradition-honored style of the South -- an open flame not fueled by propane. “Barbecue is very sacred,” he says with a smile as he mentions the dos and don’ts of barbecuing. “I never use propane. I always cook with wood and Kingsford charcoal.”

Community Commitment

The grill mission is a community effort, and St. Paul’s receives a lot of local support. Food Lion on N.C. 5 in Aberdeen “is one of our biggest supporters,” says Thomas. The store often “donates cake and drink and frequently gives gift cards, up to $50 depending on the need.” Other food is bought locally. “We buy our fish at Aberdeen Produce. When we serve ribs, we get them from Aberdeen Packing that sells to us at cost,” says Thomas. Some items are also provided by other community friends and church members.

In addition to serving the Lord, Tony Washington dreams of opening his own ribs restaurant and cooking full-time when he retires from the Army. “I definitely want to be on Highway 5. I’d like to have it between Aberdeen and Pinehurst. We have a commitment to this community,” he says.

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Note: This posting is a slightly edited version of an article published originally in The Pilot (Southern Pines, NC) on November 21, 2010 (pages C1 and C6).